TRENTON — Some witnesses at a shootout Thursday morning claimed police shouldn’t have handcuffed the man who shot and injured two city police officers and died at the scene.

But Mercer County Prosecutor Joe Bocchini defended the officers’ actions when questioned about the procedures.

“The first thing they do when they go over to him is to handcuff him and make sure you have him in possession,” the prosecutor said Thursday. “Then you check to see what his condition is. The body was there handcuffed, but it’s a crime scene.”

Eric McNeil, 23, was shot and killed after he ambushed detectives Edgar Rios and Jimmy Letts when they took the shooter’s ex-girlfriend back to her house on the first block of Hobart Avenue following a domestic violence incident earlier that morning, authorities said.

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Both officers were each shot twice by McNeil — Rios in his torso and Letts in his right shoulder and the right side of his abdomen — as he came out of the house firing a .38 revolver at the officers outside of their car.

One of the officers returned fire and shot McNeil three times and killed him. The prosecutor’s office declined to identify the officer that killed McNeil.

“There was a gun fight, he opens up fire on two cops, the cops return fire, he goes down,” Bocchini said.

Some witnesses claimed police let McNeil die.

Bocchini responded to those accusations by saying, “This isn’t television.”

“People used to watching NCIS, then watch television,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is real life.”

Rios, a 30-year veteran, remains in critical, but stable condition following two days of surgery to control internal bleeding at the Capital Health Regional Medical Center.

Letts was released Friday from the hospital.

A 30-year veteran, Rios is a fixture in the TPD’s homicide unit and Letts has been on the force for 15 years.

Before the shootout began at approximately 8:45 a.m., McNeil allegedly broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house earlier that morning and kicked and punched her and killed her three-week old puppy.

McNeil fled the scene, but later returned to the house to wait for his ex-girlfriend.